Ukraine war: Moscow claims to thwart ‘massive’ drone attack on Russia
Russia claims to have destroyed more than 150 drones overnight that targeted Russian energy facilities
Kyiv launched one of the biggest drone attacks on Russia since the full-scale war began, targeting power plants and an oil refinery overnight, while Moscow’s forces made further advances towards a key town in eastern Ukraine, officials said on Sunday.
Ukraine also reported Russian shelling of areas near their shared border. A missile attack on a grain convoy killed a truck driver while another, on Ukraine’s second largest city of Kharkiv in the northeast, injured at least 28, it said.
The fighting comes at a critical juncture in the two-and-a-half year conflict, with Russia pressing an offensive in eastern Ukraine while trying to expel Ukrainian forces that broke through its western border in a surprise incursion on August 6.
Russia last week pounded Ukraine with its heaviest air strikes of the war, hitting energy facilities, part of a campaign of drone and missile barrages that have killed thousands of civilians and troops since the conflict began in February 2022.
Ukraine, with a rapidly expanding domestic drone industry, has stepped up its own attacks on Russian energy, military, and transport infrastructure.
It is also pressing the United States and other allies for permission to use more powerful Western-supplied weapons to inflict greater damage inside Russia and impair Moscow’s abilities to attack Ukraine.